All liquid concrete that is still uncured needs to be contained by load bearing means, to hold the concrete in place until it hardens sufficiently to hold its own shape. With concrete slabs, the freshly-poured concrete may be retained by existing features such as upright walls, curbs, edgings, etc., or by some form of temporary shuttering also known as a “formwork”. Formworks can be quite expensive; indeed, the cost of formworks generally represents a significant proportion of the total cost of the completed concrete structure.
Inexpensive formworks can be made of an assembly of wooden boards and stakes. However, the wooden boards and stakes of the formworks are known to adhere to the concrete once dried and hardened in the formwork, unless they are lubricated prior to use. Therefore, workmen therefore generally have to oil up the wooden boards and stakes, which is a time-consuming, messy and generally inconvenient task, in order to afterwards be able to remove the formwork from the cured concrete.
A relatively new alternative to wooden formworks are formworks made of thermoplastic panels. However, existing thermoplastic formworks are generally inconvenient to set up.